Nigerian doctors suspend strike to allow government time to meet demands

Nigerian resident doctors on Thursday suspended a strike to allow the government time to meet its demands over pay and working conditions amid the spread of the coronavirus, the head of the doctors’ union said.

The National Association of Resident Doctors resolved to suspend the strike “to give government time to address our demands,” said Aliyu Sokomba, president of the union, in a WhatsApp message to Reuters.

The strike began on Monday, and included 16,000 resident doctors out of a total of 42,000 doctors in the country, including those who worked in COVID-19 treatment centres, he had said earlier this week.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, has more than 55,000 confirmed coronavirus infections and more than 1,000 deaths.

Resident doctors are medical school graduates training as specialists. They are pivotal to frontline healthcare in Nigeria as they dominate the emergency wards in its hospitals.

The union last went on strike in June, demanding better benefits and more protective equipment for battling coronavirus. They are still demanding, among other things, life insurance and hazard allowances.

A labour ministry statement earlier this week said the government had spent 20 billion naira ($52.53 million) on hazard allowances for healthcare workers in April, May and June, and had met the bulk of the doctors’ demands.


Reuters

Video - What’s being done to keep learning going in northern Nigeria?

In observance of the first-ever ‘International Day to Protect Education from Attack’ on 9 September, The Stream is partnering with Witness to discuss a new documentary on the subject. Ahmad the Architect follows Ahmad Buba, a man on a mission to help his native Nigeria undo the harm caused by Boko Haram, an armed group that doesn’t believe in Western education, and for more than a decade has bombed schools, killed teachers and kidnapped students. The film focuses on Ahmad’s efforts to build twenty four boarding schools for orphans of the violence and fourteen mosques. According to UNICEF, the attendance rate in Northern Nigeria is roughly 53 percent. While Boko Haram is largely to blame for the lack of education, various other factors play into the abandonment of learning including lower value on the education of girls, joblessness and drug use. In this episode of The Stream, we discuss the efforts to fix Nigeria’s debilitated education system and efforts to revive the schools.

Nigerian men arrested over German PPE 'scam

 Two Nigerian men have been arrested for allegedly scamming a German state that tried to buy 2.3m euros (£2m) of personal protective equipment (PPE).

Nigerian police say they cloned the website of a Dutch company to obtain an order from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

When the PPE didn't show up, a state government representative visited the company's offices in the Netherlands.

The company then informed him that they had never done business with him.

The representative notified the Dutch police and investigations led to Nigeria where the two suspects were arrested in the commercial capital, Lagos. They are due to appear in court soon.

The suspects, Babatunde Adesanya and Akinpelu Hassan Abass, were members of a "sophisticated transnational criminal network", Nigerian police said in a statement.

The pair allegedly cloned the corporate website of ILBN Holdings BV in order to carry out the scam on Freiherr Fredrick Von Hahn, who represented North Rhine-Westphalia. The PPE was needed for the battle against coronavirus.

Two more arrests have also been made in the Netherlands.

According to Nigerian police, Mr Von Hahn was "disturbed" when the PPE did not arrive, only to find out that "the company never did business with him and that the transaction was a scam".

BBC

Mathematics teacher in Nigeria uses social media to ‘teach the whole world’

For many 12th graders, the closure of Nigeria’s public schools to combat the spread of COVID-19 presents a particular problem: How to prepare for crucial, final exams?

Basirat Olamide Ajayi, a math teacher in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, came up with a solution. She began offering free mathematics classes online via Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram. And now, after almost six months, more than 1,800 students at various levels are taking her classes -- across Nigeria and even internationally.

Students watch her short math videos -- no more than 5 minutes long -- and respond to her questions. She will send them homework, and occasional assignments. And she grades them.

“Sometimes, I stay awake till 2 a.m. going through their assignments!” she said.

“COVID is here with both negative and positive impacts. The positive impact is that we can use technology to teach our students, which I am very, very happy about,” she said.

When Ajayi, 36, started her online classes, she solved math problems on camera on white sheets of paper. Then a parent saw how she was conducting the class and donated a whiteboard.

Her free classes are attracting students from all over Nigeria, and now students abroad are joining. A recent request came from Canada.

Ajayi says she is beginning to see herself as a global teacher.

“The online teaching has made me feel that I can actually teach the whole world mathematics,” she said. “On Twitter people see me all over the world, not only in Lagos, not only in Nigeria. They see me all over the world and that is enough to give me innermost joy.”

But not all students in Nigeria have easy access to her lessons.

“Some of them don’t even have data to access the class, and that is not giving me joy at all, as a teacher that wants students to be online,” she said. Ajayi said she pays for data for some of the students from her own pocket to allow them to be online.

Some students don’t even have phones; Ajayi encourages parents to share their phones.

Fortune Declan, 17, said Ajayi has made it easier for him to grasp mathematics.

“Originally when I started learning differentiation on my own it was kind of twitchy,” he said. “But when I joined the online maths platform, I started slow at first, but with the way my maths teacher was teaching, holding the sessions, I started learning differentiation rapidly.”

Her dedication is noteworthy, said Adedoyin Adesina, chairman of the Lagos arm of the Nigerian Union of Teachers.

“Teaching students virtually was a new experience to everybody,” he said. “There is the problem of slow internet, the cost of data and the uncooperative attitude of parents who were not familiar with what teachers are doing.”

Faced with the new challenges, Ajayi has shown real dedication, he said, especially as “she was not provided with money, data or any teaching material.”

Although she misses being in the classroom, Ahayi said she is gratified to be helping so many students: “The more I give, the more society will benefit from me and people can say ‘Mrs. Ajayi has done this to the whole world.’”


Hindustan Times

Nigerian healthtech startup to create prestigious genomics facility in Nigeria

Nigeria-based healthtech startup, 54gene has partnered with Illumina, a US-based genomics company to create a first-class genomics facility in Nigeria.

The partnership will support the establishment of a new genetics facility in Lagos, Nigeria, equipped with a suite of Illumina’s cutting-edge sequencing and high-density microarray technology platforms, which will generate genetic information for health research and drug development.

Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong, founder and CEO of 54gene explains that the new partnership will open doors for new scientific discovery and expand genomics research.

“The addition of Illumina’s cutting-edge technology to our research and diagnostic capabilities is a critical step for 54gene in fulfilling our mission of equalizing precision medicine. This is part of our wider commitment to building capacity and infrastructure in Africa which will allow us to significantly expand genomics research, while also improving health outcomes on the continent. Alongside our many partners in the African medical and scientific community, we want to make advanced molecular diagnostics more accessible to the region, while creating hundreds of skilled jobs in molecular biology and bioinformatics.”

In addition, the new collaboration will expand 54gene’s sequencing-based research and molecular diagnostics capabilities with a focus on improving health outcomes through precision medicine.

According to 54gene, Africa contains more genetic diversity than any other continent because the African genome is the oldest human genome.

Yet it is estimated that fewer than 3% of the genomes analyzed come from Africans, making it a potentially rich source of new genetic information for health and drug discovery research.

Founded in 2019, 54gene is a health technology company whose mission is to advance precision medicine capabilities in Africa through research, advanced molecular diagnostics, and clinical programs.

54gene intends to leverage off this as a global research resource while ensuring Africans benefit from cutting edge medical innovations.

Through the partnership, African samples stored in 54gene’s de-identified biobank will be genotyped, sequenced, and analyzed without the need to send samples overseas. The creation of local infrastructure will reduce costs and turnaround for critical test results. Illumina will provide training to support the use of its sequencing and microarray equipment and ensure ongoing support for 54gene’s growing team of molecular scientists.

Paula Dowdy, SVP, General Manager EMEA, Illumina comments on the importance of, “It’s incredibly important to ensure equitable access to genomic sequencing technology across the world so that genomes can be interpreted in the context of global diversity. Through partnerships such as this with 54gene, we aim to remove barriers of access to sequencing and expand the benefits of genomics to as many people as possible.”

Venturburn